Carnivore

xi) Transuerso

ANGELS FELL FROM THE DARKENED SKIES. Or at least that was a story she once heard someone express simply as a metaphor for the phenomena of shooting stars. Angels falling from the stars, having taken too many of man-kinds sins upon their alabaster shoulders, where they land, letting sin take hold of their bodies to become devils in disguise, eager to destroy the ones who had wrought their downfall, for revenge. Their wings shimmered in the moonlight like the after-image of the bright star shooting across the skies, shedding the glistening feathers like the leaves of a tree through a storm.

Perhaps that was why feathers fell from the skies even now, their fibres painting the world in glistening specks of white like snow dancing in the wind.

Zinnia watched the feathers fall, touching the ground before bursting to light, leaving naught but the fading after-glow of white dancing in her eyes. She still wandered, following coloured footprints left like paint on the bottom of feet left across the land, stumbling along in the darkened dreamscape that felt more real to her than the waking world of medicine and pain. The chiming had dulled quite a while ago, its presence nothing more than an uncomfortable pressure in the back of her head.

Out of the forests and into the grasslands, peppered with the rain rising to the heavens against the feathers that fell to the ground, and voices bounced through the dark, twirling around as if their owners were having a merry old time dancing in the distance, out of her field of vision.

The feathers continued to fall, the odd few that landed upon coloured footprints glistened in matching colour before it vanished in a flash of light. Flowers of red glowed through the grasses that reached to caress her feet, its glistening red petals splayed outwards almost like a decorative spider. Indescribable curiosity had overcome her somewhere in the midst of her wanderings, the manner in which she returned to this world evading her knowledge for the most part. She had wound up collecting quite a number of the eerily beautiful flowers, and continued to do so whenever she happened upon more.

She was compelled, as if the flowers themselves spoke to something inside of her, begging her to acquire them all, along the way.

They grew in great clusters around every print of sapphire tracks in varying shades, reminiscent of a large dog far larger than herself, if that were possible. Rimming the prints like they had grown from the very feet that made the tracks, the flowers sprouted effortlessly through the grasslands devoid of any other blooming flora.

The night breeze sung, as if uttering a symphony of promises to her, caressing the exposed skin her white dress did not cover. It was like the cool embrace of water on a mid-summers eve, engulfing, comforting, easing the discomfort of summer from her tired flesh.

Eventually, voices pierced the air, haughty, shrieking voices that were reminiscent of nails scraping down a blackboard, of steel tearing harshly against glass. Their egocentric laughter reminded her horrendously of hyena cries. And, as she reached the peak of the hill she was climbing, she realized they really were hyena, or some abomination adorned with the features of a hyena in any case.

Seven forms at least thrice Zinnia's own size took up the valley between a cluster of hills in the grasslands, ripping the ground to pieces as their forms clashed, fighting with claws slashing and teeth gnashing, missing throats by mere wisps of air. Their forms were slightly humanesque in shape, virtually hairless beyond the remaining stray wisps that grew from their scalps, clad in nothing but the remaining tatters of old, black clothes that were so viciously damaged, it barely covered anything worthy of modesty. With the faces of hyena, the ears, tail and limbs to match, the forms were as unpleasant to the eyes as their shrill, screeching cries were to the ears.

Beneath their clashing forms lay a small, curled up ball of brown fur, trembling and quivering, too terrified to move from in among the strewn mess of basketballs and hard-boiled eggs that littered the mess of sapphire paw prints which stained the barren ground. Chunks of stone had been strewn within their fighting, and as Zinnia walked closer, she saw one of the monstrosities manage to latch its fanged maw around the throat of another, and rip out its throat.